Oh my, this is a rare occurrence: quite a lot of series suffer from an underdeveloped villain, out there to destroy the world for a weak or shallow reason. This isn’t the case for Please Save my Earth, though. Heck, the major villain is actually the best-developed character of the entire series!

Please Save my Earth is one of those rare six-episode OVAs that prefers to focus on the story and the major villain, instead of the usual characters. The setting is also a memorable one, with a few similarities to Fantastic Children, and it makes sure that the villain has a good reason for his grudges.

Unfortunately, the good guys do have their problems. Don’t get me wrong, they’re deep, they’re developed, but unfortunately they haven’t been fleshed out well enough. Please Save my Earth seems to be another manga-adaptation, and in the end six episodes turned to be too small for this story. At times, the characters also keep angsting while it would have been better to see more of their sides. Especially the background story: it has so much potential, but we hardly see anything of it.

Still, for an OVA, this is definitely an above-average one. It starts out really annoying, but soon a twist will make you see that this is more than just an ordinary high-school drama. The animation may be a bit dated (this is fifteen years old), the music has been composed by Yoko Kanno in her early days, and it shines. Combine this with deep characters and you have quite a good way to spend three hours.

And finally, the behemoth of the series that is known as Les Miserables -Shoujo Cosette has ended. For the revival of the World Masterpiece Theatre, the classic novel by Victor Hugo was chosen to get an adaptation, and the result has become terrific; a masterpiece in terms of story and characters. Sure, the series is aimed at children, but don’t think that children will be the only ones to enjoy this, because Les Miserables is an epic for every age.

The series consists out of five arcs, where every arc is different from the other. Indeed, the first arc focuses on how a small girl called Cosette has to live under the evil Thenardiers. The fourth arc, however, deals with a bunch of men that fight for their beliefs in a revolution, and Cosette herself actually plays a very small role in this. There is indeed a lot of building-up, but because of this, every character can be fleshed out and developed. Every bit of storyline can be explained and carried further, and every single climax works, and takes the best out of the characters and the story, with the definite highlight being the fourth arc.

Les Miserables definitely isn’t your standard anime. There are no cheesy villains that are out there to destroy the world. No teenagers that can pilot giant robots. What we have here is a story that manages to remain realistic and yet exciting. Every character fits his or her role exactly and there is hardly any character that doesn’t develop somehow. There’s just one downside, though. The book was quite dark, and most of the dark elements did remain in the series. Unfortunately, the heaviest themes as prostitution and suicide had to be scrapped though. The ending also ends up being much lighter than that of the book, but that doesn’t mean that it’s less developed. Les Miserables remains an excellently written series, from beginning to end.

Overall, if you liked Studio Ghibli’s non-action movies then you’ll definitely like this one. It’s such a shame that the subs have only reached up till episode 6. If there ever was a series that deserves to be subbed, it’d be this one, because for me it had the best story and character-development of the entire year of 2007. Let’s hope that Porfy’s Long Journey doesn’t get the same negligence.

What an awesome way to end such an awesome series! Even though there was nothing of Thenardiére and Azelma, we get something that’s even better: the death of Jean Valjean. I didn’t believe that this series would be able to make me cry after the revolution ended, and thankfully I was so wrong about this. Jean’s end was incredibly well-done, and is it me or did the graphics look better than ever in this episode?

This episode starts with a time-skip of what I’d guess are a few months. Gavroche and his two brothers are settled into their school, and especially Gavroche is making a lot of progression. Cosette and Marius have just moved out, into Courfeyrac’s old apartment. It’s at that point where they get a letter from Jean, and with that they finally manage to find him back.

The guy has indeed wilted away, and has become sick in the months that he was away from Cosette. It also seems that he stopped using fake names, and he’s known to the people as just “Jean Valjean”. He also stopped hiding the chandeliers from everyone, and he actually grew a small beard. When Cosette and Marius meet him, he finally has the courage to tell Cosette about his own life, and of the times he served in jail (it was awesome to see Jean in his twenties, by the way). After he finishes telling, it seems that he’s finally content enough to stop caring about his own life, and dies.

In the aftermath, we see Javert again as well, when he comes to give a quick visit to Jean’s grave. The anime ends with a few flashbacks and shots of the different characters passing out food and clothes to the poor, and the final scene goes three or four years into the future, where Marius and Cosette along with their daughter, a very reminiscent scene for the first episode when Cosette had her final moments with her mother.

To close off, I would like to thank Irene, angedemystere, Tania, Dookers and R for keeping the comments coming. Out of all the shows I’ve been blogging, Les Miserables has had the most discussion going on in the comments, and it was a lot of fun to read them for every week. I’m not sure if you’re going to watch Porfy’s Long Journey as well, but I’m definitely going to follow it. :)

Okay, so the current is going to be predictable. Kaiji just has to survive; otherwise the show would just run out of main character. Still, that didn’t prevent this episode from being among the best that this series has had to offer. At the moment, I only see one annoyance in this series: this is one of the worst series to take screenshots for: all the best shots have subtitles in them.

In the Espoir-arc, death was more symbolic, but for the Starside-arc, it’s gotten much, much closer. I loved how, now that there is no more competition, the ten remaining contestants feel much closer together, now that they won’t have to betray to stay alive. Very refreshing for this series. Instead of that, a new threat has appeared: plain old fear and I loved how this episode showed how easily this can go out of control if your life is at stake. Take that, action-movies!

Tonegawa is also shaping up to be one of my favourite characters of this series. Unlike all the contestants, he’s not limited by predictability and after the previous episode I wouldn’t have thought that he’d actually enjoy events like this, seeing the scum of society suffer so much.

One thing that would make Kaii’s survival more credible is that he by far the most emotionally involved with the others. In this episode, you can see that he’s too busy with worrying about the others’ survival to realize that he too is on the verge of death. I also predict that Ishida will play a big role in the next episode, because he keeps relying on Kaiji so much. The two of them will probably use this to get to the other side, while Sahara will use his competitive spirit against Kaiji. It’s a shame that the other characters didn’t receive enough development like this, and they’ll probably all end up dying as well. Perhaps with the exception of the guy in the red shirt.